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TCC and First-tier Tribunal sit together for the first time under the Building Safety Act 2022Mr Justice Constable and Judge Siobhan McGrath, President of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), have handed down judgment in Wallace Estates Limited v Durkan Estates Limited [2026] EWHC 2133 (TCC). It marks the first joint hearing of the President of the FTT and a judge of the TCC sitting together.BackgroundThe dispute concerns a remediation agreement dated 1 July 2024 (“RA”) under which Durkan Estates Limited (“Durkan”) agreed to remedy, at its own cost, relevant defects within the meaning of section 120 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (the “BSA”) at Centrillion Point in Croydon. The defects are the subject of a remediation order made by the FTT on 4 January 2024 against the freeholder, Wallace Estates Limited (“Wallace”). On 26 June 2025, two days after the FTT refused its application to extend the time for compliance with that order, Wallace served a notice purporting to terminate the RA and took over the remedial works.Two sets of proceedings followed. In September 2025 Wallace applied to the FTT for a remediation contribution order (“RCO”) under section 124 of the BSA…

The Claimants sought urgent injunctive relief to restrain a $484 million bond call.  The Defendant appeared at short notice to oppose the relief sought.The Claimants are to pay 100% of the Defendant’s costs.Tom Owen KC and Alexandra Bodnar appeared for the Defendant.Link to judgment: [2026] EWHC 2047 (TCC).

Mr Justice Constable has refused a freeholder’s application for reverse summary judgment on a claim that its termination of a Building Safety Act remediation agreement was unlawful. The judgment is a useful corrective to the assumption that the statutory backdrop of a remediation order makes delay easier to characterise as repudiatory. It does not.The disputeCentrillion Point in Croydon was converted from offices into flats by Durkan Estates Ltd (“Durkan”) in the late 2000s. Wallace Estates Ltd (“Wallace”) acquired the freehold in 2014. In January 2024 the First-tier Tribunal made a remediation order under s.123 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (“BSA”) requiring Wallace to remedy relevant defects by 31 May 2025.Durkan — an entity against which Wallace could have sought a remediation contribution order under s.124 — agreed instead to carry out the works at its own cost. The resulting Agreement, dated 1 July 2024, set a completion date of 19 September 2025 “or such other date as is agreed as part of the Plans and Specifications”. That date was already later than the deadline in the remediation order, a point which came to matter.By June 2025 no Gateway 2 application had been made to…